Why data collection is important in development works

“In God we trust. All others must bring data” - W. Edwards Deming (Statistician, professor, author, lecturer and consultant). This quote describes the level of importance organizations, funders and people, in general, give to data today. Data is very fundamental to the operations of every Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), it governs their activity from start to finish, such that before every action is taken, data is collected to ‘get the facts rights’ - This data collection process cuts across problem identification, needs assessment, tracking of the reach based on the program implementation, measuring the level of impact and reporting program outcome to stakeholders.

The insights gleaned from data allow an organization to know, track and measure its efforts and give insight into actionable steps to improve its strategies. This information gathered allows organizations to analyze past strategies and stay informed on what needs to change to either deepen or widen its reach/impact. For instance, at Junior Achievement Nigeria, we are able to use data collected on the field to clearly identify and categorise our beneficiaries based on the learning experience and engagement with our programs, through a method called IPS (Inspire, Prepare, Succeed). This unique counting methodology helps us to effectively track and measure our impact based on the level of engagement a beneficiary has had with our programs, inspire refers to introductory learning experiences that develop an interest, while prepare refers to learning experiences that prepare learners/youth for meaningful work and starting sustainable businesses by building skills, attitudes and competencies validated through learning assessments, and succeed are applied learning experiences that demonstrate mastery of competence like starting a business, or getting a badge/credential, participating in a competition etc. Through this counting methodology, our programs are now carefully designed, selected and modified to ensure that learners are encouraged to move from an inspire learning experience where they are introduced to our programs’ content based on our core pillars to a Succeed learning experience where they show a form of mastery, through application of knowledge gained from the learning experience.

Data is only valuable if it is accurate, relevant, and timely. The data collection method highly depends on the nature of the program or the subject, beneficiary, or audience of the program and the program duration. The main objective of any data collection technique is to guarantee that reliable information is collected for analysis to enable effective data-driven insight to be drawn from the result and communicated to the relevant stakeholders. Surveys, interviews, observations, and focus groups, are fundamental data collection methods often used in the developmental space.

Surveys, which is one of the most common data collection process are physical or digital questionnaires that gather both qualitative and quantitative data from subjects. One situation in which you might conduct a survey is gathering attendee feedback before an event called a baseline survey and after an event called a post-survey, This can provide a sense of what attendees enjoyed, learned, what they wish was different, and areas in which you can improve or save money during your next program for a similar beneficiary.

While physical copies of surveys can be sent out to participants, digital data collection tools like kobo-collect, ODK, etc. are more efficient, and they can also be inexpensive; running a survey can cost significantly less if you use a free tool, but often requires extra manpower and sometimes time consuming when issuing it to the beneficiaries and quite expensive if using hard copy questionnaires as there is a high cost of printing, and takes time to upload as a data entry officer needs to be engaged to enter these data to be employed and sometimes if errors are made during the upload, it is difficult to identify unless it reflects as outliers during analysis.

In conclusion, every data collection process must be planned and designed to fit the nature of the program and the beneficiaries in focus. This can only be achieved when there is a clear understanding of the goal and objectives of the program. The accuracy of the data collected and a proper analysis of this data is essential to NGOs when monitoring and evaluating the impact of programs, if properly done, NGOs can win the hearts of donors and ultimately convince them that the program/project was worth the donor’s funding. Primarily, it is important to show donors verifiable outcomes of the different initiatives and programs that they fund or intend to fund, and this can only be best communicated after a detailed analysis of the data collected. The structured insight gained from the data is able to keep an organization accountable to its organization, donors and board members.